Lately I’ve been listening to my old Jackson Browne CDs while driving in the car. Although I’ve heard them a hundred times before, the opening chord of every song catches me by the throat. Yesterday I cried three times on my drive home from Petaluma. Why do these songs make me so emotional?
When I look back on my childhood for clues about who I am today, I see that I’ve always been someone who gathers people together. First it was the “Shell Club.” The whole idea revolved around an abalone shell my Uncle Darel brought back for me from his diving trip.
A few months ago, I had lunch with a long-time friend who was moving across country. After our sandwiches and burgers, the time came for that farewell hug. As we embraced, I felt the tears squeeze out, and I said, “I’m not crying because you’re leaving. I’m crying because, in your leaving, I feel how much I love you.”
I like to think of writing as a search for things that have been lost, hidden, misplaced, ignored, forgotten, buried, or stashed behind the backyard fence. See there? As soon as I wrote “backyard fence,” I saw an image of the dog-eared fence behind the pink stucco house where I lived as a little girl.